Oracle VBCS - Pay As You Go Cloud Model Experience Explained

If you are considering starting using VBCS cloud service from Oracle, may be this post will be useful. I will share my experience with pay as you go model.

Two payment models are available:

1. Pay As You Go - good when accessing VBCS time to time. Can be terminated at any time
2. Monthly Flex - good when need to run VBCS 24/7. Requires commitment, can't be terminated at any time

When you create Oracle Cloud account, initially you will get 30 days free trial period. At the end of that period (or earlier), you can upgrade to billable plan. To upgrade, go to account management and choose to upgrade promotional offer - you will be given choice to go with Pay As You Go or Monthly Flex:

As soon as you upgrade to Pay As You Go, you will start seeing monthly usage amount in the dashboard. Also it shows hourly usage of VBCS instance, for the one you will be billed:

Click on monthly usage amount, you will see detail view per each service billing. When VBCS instance is stopped (in case of Pay As You Go) - you will be billed only for hardware storage (Compute Classic) - this is relatively very small amount:

There are two options, how you can create VBCS instance - either autonomous VBCS or customer managed VBCS. To be able to stop/start VBCS instance and avoid billing when instance is not used (in case of Pay As You Go) - make sure to go with customer managed VBCS. In this example, VBCS instance was used only for 1 hour and then it was stopped, it can be started again at anytime:

To manage VBCS instance, you would need to navigate to Oracle Cloud Stack UI. From here you can start stop both DB and VBCS in single action. It is not enough to stop VBCS, make sure to stop DB too, if you are not using it:

ADF Postback Payload Size Optimization

Recently I came across property called oracle.adf.view.rich.POSTBACK_PAYLOAD_TYPE. This property helps to optimize postback payload size. It is described in ADF Faces configuration section - A.2.3.16 Postback Payload Size Optimization. ADF partial request is executing HTTP post with values from all fields included. When postback property is set to dirty, it will include into HTTP post only changed values. As result - server will get only changed attributes, potentially this can reduce server time processing and make HTTP request size smaller. This especially can be important for large forms, with many fields.

Let's take a look into example. After clicking on any button in the form, go to network monitor and study Form Data section. You will see ID's and values for all fields included in the UI. All fields are submitted with HTTP request by default, even these fields were not changed:

Postback optimization property can be set in web.xml. By default it's value is full, change it to dirty:

With value set to dirty, try to change at least one field and then press any button. Observe Form Data section in network monitor - only fields with changed values will be submitted:

Try to test it in your project and see the difference.

Check my sample app for this use case on GitHub.

Contextual Chatbot with TensorFlow, Node.js and Oracle JET - Steps How to Install and Get It Working

Blog reader was asking to provide a list of steps, to guide through install and run process for chatbot solution with TensorFlow, Node.JS and Oracle JET.

Resources:

1. Chatbot UI and context handling backend implementation - Machine Learning Applied - TensorFlow Chatbot UI with Oracle JET Custom Component

2. Classification implementation - Classification - Machine Learning Chatbot with TensorFlow

3. TensorFlow installation - TensorFlow - Getting Started with Docker Container and Jupyter Notebook

4. Source code - GitHub

Install and run steps:

1. Download source code from GitHub repository:

2. Install TensorFlow and configure Flask (TensorFlow Linear Regression Model Access with Custom REST API using Flask)

3. Upload intents.json file to TensorFlow root folder:

4. Upload both TensorFlow notebooks:

5. Open and execute (click Run for each section, step by step) model notebook:

6. Repeat training step few times, to get minimum loss:

7. Open and execute response notebook:

8. Make sure REST interface is running, see message below:

9. Test classification from external REST client:

10. Go to socketioserver folder and run (install Node.js before that) npm install express --save and npm install socket.io --save commands:

11. Run npm start to startup Node.js backend:

12. Go to socketiojet folder and run (install Oracle JET before that) ojet restore:

13. Run ojet serve to start chatbot UI. Type questions to chatbot prompt:

JavaScript - Method to Call Backend Logic in Sequential Loop

When we call backend REST service from JavaScript - call by default is executed async. This means it will not wait until response from backend is received, but will continue executing code. This is expected and desired functionality in most of the cases. But it might be requirement, where you want to call backend in synchronised way. Example - calling backend service multiple times in the loop, next call must be invoked only after previous call is complete. With default async functionality, loop will complete before first REST call.

Here is the example of calling backend REST service (through Oracle JET API, using JQuery in the background). Call is made 3 times, with success callback printing a message. One more message is printed at the end of each loop iteration:

Three backend REST calls are executed in the loop:

Loop completes earlier than REST call from the first iteration, we can see it from the log:

It might be valid and expected behaviour for most of the cases. But depending on backend logic, may be you would like to guarantee no call from second iteration will be invoked, until first iteration call not complete. This can be achieved by specifying async function and using Promise inside the loop. We should use await new Promise syntax and resolve it in success callback by calling next():

With promise applied, loop is executed sequentially - next loop iteration is started, only after backend service success callback is invoked. You can see it from the log:

Source code is available on my GutHub repository.

Custom JavaScript Client Code in Oracle Visual Builder

Hey, this is my first post about VBCS, you should expect more posts in the future about this topic. Red Samurai decided to choose VBCS as our primary JavaScript development IDE in the cloud. We are going to use it for declarative JS development, similar as we use JDeveloper for ADF.

I was going through the custom JS client code functionality in VBCS and thought it would be good idea to describe how it works. There is good material available for the same topic from Oracle, I recommend to go through it - Variables, Modules, and Functions, OH MY! Custom Client Code in Visual Builder.

I have created simple UI with one input and one output field. Button calls custom JS method, where value from input field will be processed and returned to be displayed in disabled field:

Below I will describe how all parts are wired together. Across different parts of VBCS there is a lot of resemblance with the way how ADF development done - this helps to reuse ADF skills for VBCS.

VBCS allows to define variables on 3 levels:

1. Page - page scope
2. Flow - flow scope
3. Application - application scope

In my example I decided to go with page scope variables (defined in page called main-start) - first one is assigned with input field and second with output:

There is property inspector, it allows to assign expressions to UI fields. Below you can see first variable assigned to input field:

Second variable is assigned to output field:

Button is assigned with action chain call - in VBCS we can call action chains. In ADF we call action listener and code Java logic in the method, here action chain gives more flexibility, you will see this below in action chain implementation:

VBCS allows to switch to code view and check HTML structure built with JET components. This is useful when you want to adjust generated code by yourself or copy layout to external JET project:

There is JS tab, associated with each VBCS page. There we can find JS file, where custom code can be included. I have created basic custom function, just for a test purpose:

VBCS JS code editor offers extensive auto suggest functionality - great help during development:

In case of syntax issues - errors are reported in audit window:

There is separate tab for action chains, I have already one - called from button (see above):

Action chain editor view - along with diagram, we have various components available. This looks slightly similar to SOA/BPM extension in JDeveloper, isn't it? In this action chain, first of all we call custom action - custom JS method define above:

Input parameter for JS call is assigned from page variable (input component):

In the next step - assign variables logic is called, this helps to assign function return value to page variable, which is mapped with output UI field:

Function return value mapping with page variable:

Application can be tested with single click, our message is printed in the log:

I have exported VBCS application and uploaded to GitHub repository. Once you export from VBCS, can access and check generated code. Here is main page code:

In main-start-page.json we can see metadata definition. For example, there we can find button event mapping with action chain:

VBCS looks very promising to me and I think this might be declarative JS development future.

CDN Support in Oracle JET

With the recent releases of Oracle JET - CDN support in your app can be enabled easily. By default JET app is set to download all JET toolkit related scripts and static files from the same host, where application is hosted. You can track it easily through network monitor, you should see such files as ojknockout.js, etc. fetched from same host:

CDN can be enabled by changing use property from local to cdn in path_mapping.json and restarting the app:

After this change, you should see all JET toolkit content to be downloaded from static.oracle.com host:

Benefit - you reduce load on your host, from where only application specific files will be downloaded, with JET toolkit code downloaded from external Oracle host. Same achievable on your own host, but JET toolkit content downloaded from Oracle host - is compressed out of the box (another benefit):

Machine Learning Applied - TensorFlow Chatbot UI with Oracle JET Custom Component

This post is based on Oracle Code 2018 Shenzhen, Warsaw and Berlin talks. View presentation on SlideShare:

In my previous post I have outlined how to build chatbot backend with TensorFlow - Classification - Machine Learning Chatbot with TensorFlow. Today post is the next step - I will explain how to build custom UI on top of TensorFlow chatbot with Oracle JET.

You can download complete source code (which includes TensorFlow part, backend for chatbot context processing and JET custom component chatbot UI) from my GitHub repository.

Here is solution architecture snapshot:

TensorFlow is used for machine learning and text classification task. Flask allows to communicate through REST to TensorFlow from outside. Contextual chatbot conversation processing is implemented in Node.js backend, communication with Oracle JET client is handled by Socket.io.

Key point in chatbot implementation - correct data structure construction for machine training process. More accurate learning will be, better classification results will be achieved afterwards. Chatbot training data can come in the form of JSON. Training data quality can be measured by overlap between intents and sample sentences. As more overlaps you have, weaker machine learning output will be produced and classification will be less accurate. Training data can contain information which is not used directly by TensorFlow - we can include intent context processing into the same structure, it will be used by context processing algorithm. Sample JSON structure for training data:

Accurate classification by TensorFlow is only one piece of chatbot functionality. We need to maintain conversation context. This can be achieved in Node.js backend, by custom algorithm. In my example, when context is not set - TensorFlow is called to classify statement and produce intent probability. There might be multiple intents classified for the same sentence - TensorFlow will return multiple probabilities. It is up to you, either to always choose intent with top probability or ask user to choose. Communication back to the client is handled through Socket.io by calling socket.emit function:

If context was already set, we don't call classification function - we don't need it in this step. Rather we check by intent context mapping - what should be the next step. Based on that information, we send back question or action to the client, again through Socket.io by calling socket.emit function:

Chatbot UI is implemented with JET custom component (check how it works in JET cookbook). This makes it easy to reuse the same component in various applications:

Here is example, when chatbot UI is included into consuming application. It comes with custom listener, where any custom actions are executed. Custom listener allows to move any custom logic outside of chatbot component, making it truly reusable:

Example for custom logic - based on chatbot reply, we can load application module, assign parameter values, etc.:

Chatbot UI implementation is based on the list, which renders bot and client messages using the template. This template detects if message belongs to client or bot and applies required style - this helps to render readable list. Also there is input area and control buttons:

JS module executes logic which helps to display bot message, by adding it to the list of messages generates event to be handled by custom logic listener. Message is sent from the client to the bot server by calling Socket.io socket.emit function:

Here is the final result - chatbot box implemented with Oracle JET: